Two dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) technology employs multiple sensor arrays which can enable high density recording (e.g., multi-terabit density recording). This TDMR technology may bring the magnetic recording industry to new heights. However, it can be challenging to design sensor assemblies with multiple sensors positioned together. This is the case whether the sensor assemblies are vertically arranged or longitudinally arranged. More specifically, vertically arranged sensor arrays (such as those depicted in FIG. 3 and FIG. 7) are an inevitable choice for fabricating multi-sensor arrays for TDMR applications.
In practice, it is desirable to make the sensor arrays with very small vertical separation to reduce the skew sensitivity. This is due to the fact that vertically aligned sensor arrays could have misalignments between adjacent sensor locations and the actual tracks of interest at some skew angle and radius conditions. As it turns out, such misalignments are proportional to the vertical separation between two sensors. As a result, it is highly desirable to reduce the vertical separation between adjacent sensors.